Im in a 9-5 office job which is paying me just over 25k and
I’m considering HGV driving as a second job / possible change of industry. I’ve heard about a limit to the amount of hours you can work as a driver which includes other jobs ?
Can you tell me more ?
I wouldn’t want to get qualified only to be able to work 1 day a month etc
Generally you can work for one day every other weekend
The office work must be officially recorded in any fixed week where you drive under EU regs
To add a bit more detail to what ROG said, you have to have a continuous, uninterrupted, 45-hour rest every other week. If you can find a driving job that allows you to fit that in along with a driving shift, then you could, in theory, work one day per week. I managed it a few times on agency when I had early starts and finishes (e.g. start 0400 Saturday, finish 1200 Saturday, start back in the office 0900 Monday).
However, in the vast majority of cases, you’ll only be able to do one day per fortnight.
If you work all week in the office then drive at weekends, the authorities can find out from tax records and National Insurance contributions .
On a multi agency checkpoint, Dvsa or the police ■■■■■■ lorries in to a weigh bridge and sometimes staff from the Department of work and pensions question drivers activity.
The Customs are present to check for red diesel or parifin/kerosene in tanks.
But can a lorry driver working all week, be a part time fireman or serve in the reserve armed forces at the weekends or not ?
Your office job may need to recorded on the tachograph as a manual entry, the risk of fatigue is highly likely and an accident could happen.
Thanks very helpful
toby1234abc:
Your office job may need to recorded on the tachograph as a manual entry
Not “may”. “must”. You must either record it on your card as a manual entry, or complete the reverse side of a tacho chart or digital tachograph printout paper. For every week (Monday-Sunday) in which you drive under EU drivers’ hours rules, you must have a complete record of all hours worked, and you must carry the previous 28 days’ worth of records with you.
I don’t think they have to be kept beyond 28 days, though. If the office hours were worked for the same company as you were driving for, then you’d return those records back to the operator, but since it’s a different company (with no interest in commercial vehicles), I don’t think there’s any need to return the records to anyone. For this reason (and the fact that doing a week’s worth of manual entries on a digital tacho is a royal PITA, especially as you have to add in a break every day to show that you’re within WTD regs), I’d make paper records, which I’d then throw away after the required 28 days.
toby1234abc:
the risk of fatigue is highly likely and an accident could happen.
I don’t see why it’s any worse than a “normal” HGV driver doing a six-day week, which is within the regulations. In fact, the risk is probably lower. In my case, I’m contracted for a 37.5-hour week in the office; a driving shift on the weekend would only just take me up to what most people on here seem to think is “normal” weekly working hours for a truck driver. Plus, the office worker will have got home relatively early during the week and had a good night’s rest each night. 9-to-5 is a 16-hour “rest” each night which I’d guess is much more than most truck drivers get.
Thx read up on it a bit more.
So as soon as you work a 6 day week (hgv and including other work) you need a 45 hour continuous break before driving again. So I could work one day each weekend if I managed to get a Sunday job starting after 3pm 
Anomaly:
Thx read up on it a bit more.
So as soon as you work a 6 day week (hgv and including other work) you need a 45 hour continuous break before driving again. So I could work one day each weekend if I managed to get a Sunday job starting after 3pm
Regs do not work in DAYS but HOURS because a day can mean many different things to folk
If you finish office job on fri at 5pm then do a driving job from 2pm to midnight on sunday (10 hours)then start office job at 9am monday you can do that every week of the year
Fri 5pm to sun 2pm = 45 hours regular weekly rest
sunday midnight to mon 9am = 9 hours minimum daily rest
OR
You could do the above one week then as you have 16 hours off between offic shifts which can be used as 9 + 7 payback, the other week will only need a weekly rest of 38 hours
That means the other week could be driving 7am to 10pm sunday for example OR sat 4am to 7pm as another example
Thanks all very helpful
Anomaly:
Thx read up on it a bit more.
So as soon as you work a 6 day week (hgv and including other work) you need a 45 hour continuous break before driving again. So I could work one day each weekend if I managed to get a Sunday job starting after 3pm
Not quite. Each Driving Hours Week (where the start of a “Driving Hours Week” is defined as the point when you start work at the end of a weekly rest), you must start a weekly rest before the same time six days later. For example, if you take Sunday off, and start your office job at 9am on Monday, you must start a weekly rest before 9am Sunday. Now, a weekly rest period can be either a full one (45 hours), or a reduced one (at least 24 hours).
Also, in any two consecutive Calendar Weeks (Monday-Sunday), you must have at least one full (45-hour) weekly rest period.
So, the 6-day thing isn’t really relevant. It’s the fact that, by working on the sixth day, you’re reducing your weekly rest down to below 45 hours. For example, if you work Monday-Friday in the office, then do a driving shift on Saturday, you’ve probably had to reduce your weekly rest (from the end of your driving shift on Saturday until the start of the office job on Monday) to below 45 hours. That means that you’ll need to have a full 45-hour weekly rest the following week (unless you happen to squeeze it in some other time, like taking holiday, for example).
It also means that you’re unlikely to be able to work Sunday on one weekend and then Saturday on the following weekend, even if you’re able to squeeze in a 45-hour rest at the weekend, because your Saturday shift will have to finish before the time at which your previous Sunday shift started.
To add to what ROG said, you still need to have your daily rest after that shift. If your Sunday shift starts at 1500, then it’s only 9 hours to midnight, at which point you have to start your daily rest, or you will have to start work late on Monday morning (since you must have a minimum 9 hours reduced daily rest). Most driving jobs will require shifts over 9 hours, at least occasionally. In my experience, agencies will pay (and charge their clients) for a minimum 8-hour shift, so the client will generally expect you to work at least 8 hours. Given that, it’s easy to see why shifts are likely to go over 9 hours in many cases. Limiting yourself to a 9-hour shift (or even a 10-hour one starting at 2pm on Sunday, which is the most you can do legally), is likely to prove a significant limitation on the work you’re offered.
In my experience, you’re likely to end up being limited to working every other weekend in the vast majority of cases. I would aim for the early Saturday morning starts (you can legally start from 2am, but there tend to be a lot of jobs starting at 4am for some reason), because then, if the shift is short and finishes before midday, you can get a full 45-hour break in and work the following weekend, but if the shift runs long, you take a reduced weekly rest and then take the whole of the following weekend off. as a normal weekly rest. That extended weekly rest would also probably pay back any compensation for the reduced rest, in case you weren’t able to pay it back during the week (because it was too many hours in a block). You really don’t want to end up getting stuck somewhere having run out of hours, and wait until Monday morning before you can drive again 
If your office hours are flexible, then that gives you a bit more scope to move things around to squeeze the rests in (e.g. finishing early on Friday or starting late on Monday).